Kvlt Waifu Review

Band	OwO
Album	Kvlt Waifu
Type	Album (Studio full-length)
Released	March 2, 2020

Reviewer :  KaroshiMetal         Rating :  40 / 100

For someone to search high and low for new refreshing black metal material, it shouldn't be a surprise to come across a certain artist whom creates their black metal art for purely parody purposes. Black Metal has become somewhat of a mockery as the years went on, but there are certainly still plenty of artists and fans/elitists whom appreciate what the genre is truly meant to represent and stand for. The genre's history and reputation make it seem like a very serious metal genre. But despite that of course, quite a few artists tend to take it and completely miss the whole point of the genre by making it seem so innocent and easy to laugh at. And that's where this album takes us...

"Kvlt Waifu" by the sole artist OwO is an 8-track album released in late 2019, clocking at a total of over 39 minutes in total and it can be seen as a massive disaster. The album begins with a simple distorted two-chord progression accompanied by somewhat slow drum crashes until it eventually shifts the tempo as the vocals come into play. While it's safe to say the drums can be easily identified as programmed, it wouldn't necessarily make it a bad thing as long as it's giving the correct adjustments to blend in with the overall atmosphere. The guitar and drum beat formula remains the same similar tempo for the other songs. Simple fast guitar tremolo riffs accompanied by programmed drum crashes is what makes this album very uninspiring. The quality of the drum beat can also suddenly shift from piercing high toned quality to heavily distorted booming which can be easily identified in the second track "Boku No Death". However, the listening experience is almost ruined in the later tracks when the drums are also given high-maxed blast beats that makes it almost impossible to pay attention to the guitar work. As such, this can be really off-putting for the listeners. The vocals themselves also have a distorted gloomy-like effect that can be somewhat effective in terms of atmosphere. It's also worth noting it's literally impossible to tell if the artist used a bass guitar to accompany the other instruments for the tracks.

The instrumentation work for the guitar and vocals are very simple with no variations but are still somewhat enough to give a deep dark atmospheric setting with it's raw-like production, aside from the horribly programmed drumming. But the drumming is not the only thing that completely destroys the listening experience as we also have the lyrical theme. While it can be understandable that not many Black Metal fans would be into the parody side of the genre for history reasons, the thing that boils this album down is the fact the lyrical theme is all about ANIME. Based on the published lyrics for this album, alot of serious black metal fans would question themselves "what the actual hell?" and just shut this album off completely. Among the lyrics, we have lines that are just plain silly or stupid such as "darkness is my waifu" and "Kvlt-chan has big tits". Such lyrics like this would be more suitable for other genres such as Pornogrind. NOT Black Metal out of all genres...

"Kvlt Chan" is a parody album that falls completely flat, resulting in it being recognized as a poser-type album for those who claim to be fans of the genre but don't appreciate it's history and reputation enough. Despite that, even though I hate to admit this due to the nature of this project, the artist is clearly capable of playing guitar and providing vocals that can be really effective and atmospheric. They just simply don't care enough for the type of genre they're going for, as the drum's unnecessary blast beats and the overall lyrical theme completely ruins the experience altogether. And so at the end of the day, listeners like myself would question just what the hell the artist was thinking...